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Joyful praise has rung out among Lutheran communities across Australia and in New Zealand in recent months, as the LCANZ has welcomed seven new pastors – bringing to eight the total of ordinations so far this year. Seven people joined the LCANZ’s ordained ministry ranks within six weeks in April and May, including three women in what has been a first for the church.
For more than 60 years, retired teachers Trevor and Liz Winderlich have been working together to plant and grow schools in Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG), sowing seeds of faith for God to harvest. Trevor and Liz’s wedding text from Psalm 37:5, ‘Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act’, reflects God’s continued grace as they tend to his earthly garden.
Hundreds of LCANZ members and friends have gathered to thank God for the 75th anniversary of Australian Lutheran World Service (ALWS) at the places where the church’s overseas aid and development agency had its beginnings. The weekend of celebration and thanksgiving events in March centred around Albury, NSW, and Bonegilla, Victoria, where ALWS’s ministry of practical love and care had its roots in the service of a Lutheran pastor almost eight decades ago.
There is not one exclusive pathway to ordination in the LCANZ. There are in fact four pathways, which are explained in the ‘Candidacy Pathways for the Office of the Public Ministry’ document released to the church recently.
Who was John the Baptist? Just a Grizzly Adams-type mountain man wearing a tunic of camel’s hair and eating grasshoppers dipped in honey? Pastor Reid Matthias reflects on the unorthodox life of this desert wanderer, whose role was to ‘go on before the Lord to prepare a way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation [and] to guide our feet into the path of peace’.
‘The good news of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ is deeper and lasting beyond simply happy feelings’, LCANZ Bishop Paul Smith says in his ‘Because we bear your name’ column in the lead-up to Christmas. ‘The telling of the nativity story is great joy. God has become enfleshed and dwelt among us out of great love for all humankind.’
General Synod voted in October to enable the ordination of both women and men as pastors in the church. Delegates supported a proposal from the General Church Board and College of Bishops to remove from the LCA’s Theses of Agreement the paragraph that prohibited women from entering the pastoral ministry.
The LCANZ’s General Synod has elected Pastor Stephen Schultz as Assistant Bishop of the church. Assistant Bishop Stephen has been serving the SA-NT District in the role of Assistant Bishop for Mission since 2018. Former Assistant Bishop Neville Otto, who served in the post for one term, did not stand for re-election.
‘Conflict is a values clash. When a conflict happens, it’s always around something valuable to us and therefore has some emotions attached to it. However, if we’re in a conflict and we don’t see the other person’s perspective, even if we win, we lose.’ That’s the view of Pastor Chris Mann, who helps workplaces deal with conflict as well as serving a Lutheran school community.
A Congregational Life website designed to support congregations and agencies in areas including worship, pastoral care, discipleship and faith teaching, outreach and church planting, and community service is being developed by the church. It is one of the outcomes of a report addressing the LCANZ’s ministry challenges.
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